Help Identifying This Keyboard

[midinut]

This is a Jo Jo Gunne song from 1972 with Jay Ferguson playing keys. I'm thinking it sounds like maybe a Pianet or a Helpenstill but I'm not sure.

I thought I would post it here and let the hive mind go at it. My guitar player wants my piano solo to sound like this on our album we're in the studio working on.

Hoping someone on here either knows Jay Ferguson or knows of him and may have some insight on his piano. TIA

 

[AnotherScott]

Not a Pianet, something strung. Maybe a Baldwin Electropiano?

[TommyRude]

I'm assuming it's an AP. Here's a pic from their site - don't know if this is what they used in the recording.

 

[TommyRude]

Here's a concert pic. Looks to be a grand, with some kind of device taped to the right hand side of the lock rail

[Docbop]

Jay Ferguson has been busy since the late 60's first in the band Spirit and then Jojo Gunne. I vaguely remember seeing them once I think at the Whiskey in Hollywood I think they had one local hit record. Most the stuff I've heard Jay used funky AP and early piano mic'ing system. Jay Ferguson has done well as a media composer.

 

Link to his IMDb page

[Steve Nathan]

I'd guess it's some kind of real piano. I know back in the late 60s, before Helpenstills were around, we used to wedge contact mikes agains the soundboard of spinets, and uprights using rubber ball cut in half. I later had a guy in Buffalo install 88 magnet&coil pickups behind the strings of a Console piano (shorter than an upright, taller than a spinet, but in. wider body so the string slant would accommodate upright length strings). I think this is an easy sound to replicate with the right eq (lose some bottom and top) and a ton of the right compression, like a DBX 160 or maybe a 33609 or a Fatso JR. There are plenty of edgy compressors that should get close.

[Tom Williams]

My ears say AP, maybe even with hardened hammers.

[midinut]

Yeah I'm hearing a brighter than normal sound. I tried a tack piano patch, a few honky tonk patches, went through Keyscape to try and find something and as much as I love it they were all mostly too clean.

The reason I mentioned Hohner Pianet was remembering that it (and the RMI Electra Piano) both kinda sounded like pianos but you (we) could tell they weren't. They were closer to what I was hearing.

 

Another example was Shake That Fat off the same album. The intro has that sound I'm talking about but then you hear what sounds like regular piano takes over. Again, when it hits the second verse you can hear it again.

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

That's an acoustic piano, but it's super compressed and it's probably an upright. Definitely an acoustic piano. It almost sounds like a piano with less than the usual three strings per note, but that would be highly unusual. I'd say you should try adding some tape simulation since you're already open to using plugins. Get the sound of slamming levels into tape plus some compression, using an upright and have it in mono. That should get you close.

[midinut]

Thanks to all of you. I'll try my best to get something that will work. Bless his heart, when he gets a sound in his head (guitar player/songwriter) THAT'S what he wants. All I can do is try to appease him.

Already had to up my game in the honky-tonk piano department for this project. lol He came in there with Billy Powel (RIP) on his brain! That was outside of my comfort zone but hey, it's what makes us develop as players, right?

[Mighty Motif Max]

I'll say that it's not particularly detuned, so honky-tonk might be going too far the other way. A decently in-tune upright should work as the basis (again in mono).

[stoken6]

My first guess was CP70/80. It's got a purity of tone that you don't get from mic'ing.

 

My first guess is wrong, I know (the slightly shimmering quality of CP is missing), but the Helpinstill idea, or some kind of pickup system, is where I'd put my money. And it's certainly highly compressed, EQ'ed for brightness, and a little chorus for the detune effect?

 

You might want to try a CP patch on your Kronos or MODX - not to be authentic, but it might capture some of the quality of what your guitar player is looking for.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[AnotherScott]

It almost sounds like a piano with less than the usual three strings per note, but that would be highly unusual.

That would describe one version of the Baldwin Electropiano I mentioned, they made one with just one string per note.

the Helpinstill idea, or some kind of pickup system, is where I'd put my money.

and ditto, the Baldwin Electropiano, which is a strung piano with short strings, and pickups but no soundboard. (I'm not saying that's what the band used, I don't know, but that's about what the Baldwin sounds like, to my memory.)

 

And no, not a Pianet (which would sound more like a Rhodes or Wulry, depending on the vintage), nor an RMI (which had its own sound but was not velocity senstive). This one is definitely strings. Even undamped at the top.

[AWkeys]

Not to shift focus, but I always wondered what Bill Payne was using on the original recording of Tripe Face Boogie:

 

[video:youtube]

[AnotherScott]

Not to shift focus, but I always wondered what Bill Payne was using on the original recording of Tripe Face Boogie

Sounds like a CP70/CP80 to me.

[MrVegas]

This thread blows my mind. I have not thought about JoJo Gunne in 20 years. I was a big fan of their early stuff as well as Spirit.

[Sam Mullins]

Jay Ferguson was my first rock concert experience as a kid; he opened for Styx on their Grand Illusion tour...which is why I went. I'm guessing if I went back and listened to both today, I would prefer Jay

[DJkeys]

Not to shift focus, but I always wondered what Bill Payne was using on the original recording of Tripe Face Boogie

Sounds like a CP70/CP80 to me.

 

I had a Helpenstill Roadmaster 64 and sold it to buy a CP70. I hated the sound of it, plus the pickups fed back at really low volumes. The sound here is very close to the Helpinstill rather than the Yamaha-

 

-dj

[mate stubb]

I don't think it's a CP70 or Electropro. Bass strings not tubby sounding enough.

[TommyRude]

The Jo Jo Gunne music from the OP is from 1972, which I believe pre-dates the Yamaha CP-70, which came out in the late 70s?

[dongna]

I think Helpinstill is a great guess. Hornsby used to use one live in his early days, and this sounds very similar IMHO.

 

[video:youtube]

[TommyRude]

Here's a concert pic. Looks to be a grand, with some kind of device taped to the right hand side of the lock rail

Maybe that's a Helpinstill control box attached to Jay's piano?

[AWkeys]

Not to shift focus, but I always wondered what Bill Payne was using on the original recording of Tripe Face Boogie

Sounds like a CP70/CP80 to me.

 

I had a Helpenstill Roadmaster 64 and sold it to buy a CP70. I hated the sound of it, plus the pickups fed back at really low volumes. The sound here is very close to the Helpinstill rather than the Yamaha-

 

-dj

 

That was my guess, though I never played one myself.